U.S. Prescription Processing and Clinical Care Enterprise: Developing and Implementing a Modern, Scalable Data Analytics Platform

U.S. Prescription Processing and Clinical Care Enterprise:

Developing and Implementing a Modern, Scalable Data Analytics Platform

Industry: Healthcare & Life Sciences

Delivery Center: India

Industry Context

In the evolving landscape of healthcare and life sciences, the need for scalable and efficient data solutions is paramount. Organizations in the pharmacy software domain are increasingly focusing on modernizing their data infrastructure. Cloud enablement and platform modernization have become critical strategies to address scalability issues and enhance data analysis performance. This industry-wide trend aims to streamline operations, improve decision-making, and ultimately deliver superior customer services. This broader industry shift underscores the pivotal role of data solutions in driving innovation and efficiency throughout healthcare technology.

Client Challenge

The client, serving both individual and chain pharmacies throughout the United States, offers solutions for prescription processing, and patient-focused clinical care. The client aimed to enhance its business intelligence capabilities to drive better decision making and optimize operations. They thus wanted to deliver analytical insights through a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform, harnessing data from diverse pharmacy data sources. The existing data warehouse hosted on-premises lacked the capacity to analyze data from multiple pharmacies or an entire chain of pharmacies. Moreover, to foster agility, the client also needed a system to perform ad hoc queries for responding to evolving business needs and market demands promptly. They also struggled to process large volumes of data and acquiring additional hardware was quite expensive.

Approach

To address the client’s challenges head-on, we decided to choose the leading-edge technology ‘Snowflake’, for its pioneering capabilities in data warehousing. his directly addressed the limitations of the existing on-premises data warehouse, enabling seamless analysis across multiple pharmacies. Snowflake’s seamless integration with Looker and optimized query performance promised unparalleled efficiency and scalability. Encora architected and implemented a comprehensive solution tailored to client’s needs.

Product Management: Ensured seamless communication and alignment throughout the process utilizing JIRA for effective management of epics and user stories.
Modern Data Stack (MDS) in Cloud: Leveraged advanced data visualization, bulk data ingestion, and continuous data ingestion through Snowflake’s snow pipes to facilitate seamless integration of disparate data sources.
Product Development: Optimized data workflows and ensured accuracy of the solution through ETL processes design, development, testing, and QA automation.
Data Analytics, Visualization & BI: Implemented modern data stack with SnapLogic for data ingestion, Snowflake for data warehousing, and Looker for reporting. Leveraged JIRA for management of epics and user stories, ensuring smooth maintenance of legacy data flows.
UX Design: Prioritized intuitive design, agility, safety, ease of use, and a flexible architecture to ensure seamless user experience.
Continuous Delivery: Achieved single-click deployment which includes provisioning the server from VMware, deploying the configuration servers, fetching, and deploying the application artifacts.
Test Strategy & Planning: Designed and executed a robust infrastructure leveraging tools like SnapLogic and the Looker API for consistent automated testing results.

Snowflake Services

Bulk Data ingestion

RBAC Hierarchy

IP Whitelisting

Data Masking

Zero Copy Cloning

Warehouse Scaling

Micro partitioning and partition pruning

Search Optimized Tables

Snowpipes

Data Retention and Time Travel

Streams and Tasks

Stored Procedures and Functions

Query Execution Plans

Results

Feature rich analytics platform hosting ~350 Pharmacy chain’s data with ~15000 individual pharmacies, resulted in significant improvements enabling pharmacies to get deeper insights into their operations, finances, and clinical decisions. This comprehensive solution:

Reduced cost through improved medication use, successful feed generation, and nationwide prescriber database support.

Enabled targeted query performance with a warehouse half the size of competitors, leveraging Snowflake's seamless integration with Looker and optimized usage of SQL.